Posted
by
timothyon Saturday April 05, 2014 @09:27AM
from the aw-c'mon-you-spoilsports dept.

jones_supa (887896) writes "Japan has ordered a destroyer in the Sea of Japan to strike any ballistic missiles that may be launched by North Korea in the coming weeks after Pyongyang fired a Rodong medium-range missile over the sea. Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera issued the order on Thursday, but did not make it public in order to avoid putting a chill on renewed talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang. The Rodong missile fell into the sea after flying 650 km, short of a maximum range thought to be some 1,300 km, which means it could reach Japan. Japanese Aegis destroyers in the Sea of Japan are equipped with advanced radar equipment able to track multiple targets and carry missiles designed to take out targets at the edge of space."

Living near North Korea is like living next door to a crazy man who walks outside and blasts away with a semi-auto rifle occasionally. Not aiming at you but just blazing away randomly while jibbering madly.

Living near North Korea is like living next door to a crazy man who walks outside and blasts away with a semi-auto rifle occasionally. Not aiming at you but just blazing away randomly while jibbering madly.

Yes, but it beats living inside North Korea.

Even if you're one of the few privileged middle class people who lead almost "normal" lives in Pyongyang you still live under the constant threat of ending up in one of the concentration camps, which can happen if someone thinks that you've said or done something that the leader clique doesn't like. Oh and by the way, they'll sometimes throw in your whole family with you, old Testament style. That is the ultimate means of how a totalitarian regime to keep the people that it has enslaved from doing anything to overthrow or reform it. Even if you manage to evade them and escape, they'll still get your family.

Future historians will place tremendous blame on China's government for doing virtually nothing to influence its neighbor and ally to stop the atrocities in the 2000's and 2010's when they easily could have with all their new-found economic and military power.

Future historians will place tremendous blame on China's government for doing virtually nothing to influence its neighbor and ally to stop the atrocities in the 2000's and 2010's when they easily could have with all their new-found economic and military power.

Uh, there are plenty of atrocities going on in China right now [wikipedia.org] so it's absurd to expect the current rulers in China to do anything about atrocities in North Korea. China wishes to have a buffer between its border and capitalist democracy South Korea and the suffering of the North Korean people is of no concern to them (heck, they deport refugees back to NK to a certain death sentence). In addition to being such a buffer, NK is a bargaining chip in all negotiations China has with the US, Japan and SK. China

Future historians will place tremendous blame on China's government for doing virtually nothing to influence its neighbor and ally to stop the atrocities in the 2000's and 2010's when they easily could have with all their new-found economic and military power.

Uh, there are plenty of atrocities going on in China right now [wikipedia.org] so it's absurd to expect the current rulers in China to do anything about atrocities in North Korea. China wishes to have a buffer between its border and capitalist democracy South Korea and the suffering of the North Korean people is of no concern to them (heck, they deport refugees back to NK to a certain death sentence). In addition to being such a buffer, NK is a bargaining chip in all negotiations China has with the US, Japan and SK. China can offer to reign in NK in return for something China wants.

Yes, but none of this is going to make China's inaction look any better to people looking back from the future at what China does (or what it doesn't do) today. The more we find out about the North Korean concentration camps the more difficult it becomes to brush it aside.

Outside of a full military invasion there is not much China can do about NK. The NK hissy fits and temper tantrums hurt China more than they do the US. Do you think China wanted to see the US and it's Asian allies beefing up their missile defense systems? That's exactly what they got when NK was spouting all the BS about launching nuclear attacks against the US and anyone else who happened to be in range.

Indeed arguing the higher moral ground can be difficult when you're an American but I can't help but feel China has blood on its hands by essentially supporting the North Korean regime. I can understand that they don't want a democratic Korean peninsula but what that fat little piglet Kim Jung does to his people is nothing short of an atrocity on the scale of the Holocaust.

Smoking weed or something right? DPRK may have began as a left-wing movement but now it is a totalitarian-nepotistic regime and has nothing to do with socialism and the beliefs and teachings of the likes of Marx or Lenin.

Did you forget that YOU were the one that said "all leftist ideologies have always resulted in totalitarian dictatorships."?

No, I was the one who said it.... And the question remains. Do any of the members embrace a fully-leftist ideology? If they embrace a mix of leftist and market-based ideologies, then their regimes only become tyrannical in as much as the amount of leftist ideologies they accept.

Careysub provide a counter example to your statement to show that your statement was false.

No, he didn't. He didn't provide an example of any fully-leftest regime. The examples he provided are mixes of left and market-based regimes. That's why they didn't succumb to dictatorships.

Even Communist China --has never been even close to communist--FTFYMao was a dictator, nothing less. The cult of personality was his main power base, not anything remotely communist. The "Maoist doctrine" was anti-intellectual fluff for the uneducated masses who bought into his persona.

North Korea's system is a far-left totalitarian system in the same vein as Stalin's Soviet Union. The term 'totalitarian' refers to the scope of government and there is no direct connection to the left/right axis.

A totalitarian regime operates under the assumption that it has the right to decide, rule and enforce over anything it pleases, right down to the thoughts you think when you're all alone in your home. If there was a reliable implant that could detect anti-government sentiment in a person's thoughts

If there was a reliable implant that could detect anti-government sentiment in a person's thoughts the North Korean government could easily decide to implant it in every child at birth.

Would Kim be stupid enough to do so, though? Dictators don't stay in power with brute force; they don't have magical powers capable of subduing millions of ordinary people. They stay in power because people think it's safer to not do anything than to resist. Put a thought-reading implant in them, and they no longer have a ch

The NK government stays in power because of the severe isolation that it keeps it's citizens in. 65 years of non-stop government repression coupled with brutal penal laws for any dissent has produced a docile, compliant, and non-questioning public that literally knows nothing about the outside world and how there lives measure up when compared to others around the world. There will never be any citizen led protests against the NK government.

Isn't it funny how left-wing regimes get excuses? The moment they begin abusing their people, they're magically no longer left-wing. Strange, eh? It's a remarkably reproducible result. It's almost as if people want to make excuses for tyranny in order to not discredit left-wing thought...the same thought that inevitably leads to tyranny wherever it is tried.

Even if you're one of the few privileged middle class people who lead almost "normal" lives in Pyongyang you still live under the constant threat of ending up in one of the concentration camps, which can happen if someone thinks that you've said or done something that the leader clique doesn't like.

Please, North Korea doesn't send you to a concentration camp just because they dont like you any more.

Now they just kill you and have done with, no messy kangaroo court, no upkeep, no requirement for new camps, simplified logistics chain.

[quote]Living near North Korea is like living next door to a crazy man who walks outside and blasts away with a semi-auto rifle occasionally. Not aiming at you but just blazing away randomly while jibbering madly.[/quote]
Welcome to Ukraine. It's about a month since we have been siege by russians

Hello! Homosexual here. While we might snicker and say that bare-chested riding is so gay... it really isn't. Sure, many gay folks are attracted to aspects of the macho-man ethos, but I wouldn't say believing in that ethos means he's gay or even a repressed homosexual.

Not really. I hate to say that NK is misunderstood, but it is. They don't do things due to being "crazy", they do things for the usual political reasons. The US and South Korea show off their military strength by having war games off NK's coast. The US labels a few countries part of an "axis of evil" and then invades two of them, with eyes on a third... NK feels the need for a "show of force", and launches some missiles. Note that the US launches missile tests on a regular basis too, which is why NK likes d

I believe his father actually had a plan. This new guy is not nearly as stable. His father was evil and cunning and he is evil and crazy. The US tests missiles too but not by flying them in the general direction of countries that they are currently having an angry dialog with. To threaten to bomb someone and then send a missile toward them is hardly the same as having a missile test or war game that has been scheduled for a year or more.

Don't for a moment think that the country is run my crazy people, they know exactly what they are doing and every move is carefully calculated.

MAD was and is carefully calculated yet utterly insane. It's almost - as in a single person making the final call to not launch - resulted in a nuclear war at least twice now. Nazi regime carefully calculated its movements. So did Stalin.

Just because you are calculating doesn't mean you can't be crazy. And it especially doesn't mean you won't start wars you can't po

And the letter from Austria arrived the day before.Germany's annexation of Austria is quite interesting due to the number of parallels with the Crimea situation. Hitler made a speech saying that Germany would tolerate the 'suppression' of millions of ethnic Germans living in Austria. Germany considered Austria as belonging to Germany, land that Germany lost after World War I. A government coup in Austria facilitated a shift of government policy towards Germany. And -after- the Germans annex

The policy has been to shoot down any missiles that had a trajectory indicating they could hit somewhere on land. Up until now no missile launch has really done that. There was one that came extremely close about last year and since then the discussion has been weather or not to start shooting them down reguardless of trajectory or broaden the "acceptable" limits and start shooting down missiles that look like they could come close.

The actual defense systems in place are some of the most advanced anti-missi

If North Korea wants to provide Japan with some awesome real-world testing of missile defense systems, then so be it. The data to be gleaned from both successful and unsuccessful missile intercepts is invaluable, and Kim Jong-un is extremely ignorant to give his "enemies" such wonderful opportunities to fine tune their defenses against his small variety of missile assets.

It sounds like a harmless game of Duck Hunt but it's hard to say just how insane that erratic dog Kim Jong is when it comes to retaliations for any of his tin-can missiles being shot down. Japanese take down missile? Fire a single artillery round into Seol!

I doubt he really cares. He doesn't want an outright war, he knows he would lose. He likes testing missiles because it's what the US also likes doing to show how powerful its military capabilities are. Japan has now decided to start shooting them down because the Prime Minister wants to ultimately get rid of the non-aggression clause in the constitution.

If anything this will just give NK an excuse to start shooting at US and SK missiles being fired as part of their regular war games off NK's coast. The stup

I doubt he really cares. He doesn't want an outright war, he knows he would lose.

This is the thing about leaders of countries who "don't really care." They don't also care if they lose the war either, they also don't care about the people under them. They simply care about inflicting as much harm as possible against their enemies as they can even if everyone under them dies. This is why N.Korea has so much artillery pointed at Seoul. And in turn, this is why a country like Iran regularly spouts off on the "genocide" bit while perusing nuclear weapons.

They don't also care if they lose the war either, they also don't care about the people under them.

Agree with the second bit, but disagree with the first. 99% of NK might live in the dark ages, but I'm sure Kim Jong-un lives a nicer life than most Americans.

This stuff is like the daily burn the US flag thing that other countries do. It is about getting people thinking about the big bad enemy over there so that they're not busy talking about the fact that they are risking their lives if they just watch some bootleg movies. It is also about making the rest of the world reluctant to do anything, since he

Kim Jong Un is just throwing a temper-tantrum because Putin is getting all the attention right now, and how can North Korea be best Korea when it's not in the spotlight? Nothing worse in my opinion than a despotic dictator with little-dog-syndrome who is also a blatant attention whore. Meanwhile we got Putin trying to either re-form the Soviet Union, or trying to start World War III, or maybe both simultaneously. #FML.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Words to live by; I suggest you embrace that. Sticking your head in the sand (when you're not wearing your rose-colored glasses) doesn't accomplish anything other than allowing Bad People to accomplish Bad Things.

Why do you think that Putin tries to start anything? That bloodless coup in Crimea has achieved several goals at the same time, there is no need to do anything else.

Now there is no need to sell gas at discount prices in exchange for the military bases on Crimea, and, since NATO won't take members with unresolved territorial differences, there is some added security due to that. The move also secured popularity for Putin since Crimea never was seen as belonging to Ukraine by Russians.

I think you're referring to the recent change in Japanese policy change that will allow Japanese weapons manufacturers to export weapons. While I'm not a fan of weapons sales it is a business that can't be outlawed unilaterally because even if nations would agree to ban weapons exports and sales to other nations, there will be still nations like North Korea or Cuba [bbc.com] who have a vested interest in selling their own weapons in violation of sanctions imposed by the UN. [reuters.com] If your neighbor next door is ramping up their military in what you believe is going to negatively impact your nation, then you'll look to buy weapons yourself. If you can't buy them through normal channels, you'll buy them from illegal channels and that's where the North Koreans and Cubans come into play. Even the Ukraine [economist.com] has been caught pushing weapons into Africa for example.

More like the Gulf of Thailand, but either way most of it is international waters. There is the whole Spratly Island thing, but that isn't near where MH370 lost contact, and everybody and their uncle is sailing through there just to try to assert their claims.

The Japanese did not say what the poster described. They simply said if a missile is aimed at or over Japan they reserve the right to shoot it down. They have posted a destroyer in the sea between Japan and North Korea for the purpose. The Reuters article actually says "a destroyer was dispatched to the Sea of Japan and will fire if North Korea launches a missile that Tokyo deems in danger of striking or falling on Japanese territory, the source said."

Not exactly controversial, though the thing about missile defense is that you usually have to engage them when they're well out over international waters if you want to prevent them from hitting you. So, there is a certain element of aggressiveness as you're attacking something that has not yet violated your territory.

I'm not sure where the boost phase of these things ends either. During the boost phase itself you can only tell what general direction it is going in - if fired over your nation then the bal